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Retro Recomendo: Nature

2025-04-13 17:00:59

Our subscriber base has grown so much since we first started eight years ago, that most of you have missed all our earliest recommendations. The best of these are still valid and useful, so we’re trying out something new — Retro Recomendo. Once every 6 weeks, we’ll send out a throwback issue of evergreen recommendations focused on one theme from the past 9 years.


Learn from Nature

Asknature.org is a free online tool where you can search thousands of nature's solutions to various challenges. Like how a decentralized society helps ants to recover from a food shortage or how maple tree seeds twirl in a tornado-like vortex to increase the reach of where their seeds are planted. Just ten minutes a day exploring this website will get you thinking differently. — CD

Amphibian love songs

A few years ago I took an unforgettable night time tour in a Costa Rican jungle to listen to frog calls, and discovered that humans aren’t the only musicians on Earth. This playlist titled Amphibian Love Songs and Soundscapes took me back to that magical evening. — MF

Star gazing navigation

Stargazing apps on your phone are magic. They work like AR-augmented reality — overlaying the night sky with outlines of constellations, star and planet names, paths of the moon, and even satellite, comet and asteroid sightings. The apps are uncannily accurate, and easy to understand. There are free apps and expensive subscriptions, but I use Star Walk 2 which cost $3. It’s the best $3 space investment I’ve ever made. — KK

Namibia live stream

This live feed of a watering hole in the Namib Desert streams live 24/7. I drop in a couple times a week and I've seen so many different animals sharing the waterhole. I've seen zebras, wildebeests, warthogs, ostriches and lot of different birds. The camera has a microphone and night vision, so you're always connected to this magical and awesome wildlife. — CD

Nature live cams

For a dose of awe and wonder head over to Explore. org and choose from almost 100 live nature cams available at any time. There’s ocean cams, bears, gorillas, puppies and kittens and other animal sanctuaries (this sheep barn can be pretty mesmerizing to watch when they’re in for the night). — CD

Identify nature app

There is utility and pleasure in being able to identify wild creatures and plants. But it’s a steep learning curve. The fastest way I found to learn is via the iOS app Seek, which will identify flowers, plants, fungi, animals, bugs instantly. It’s kind of magical. You point your phone at the specimen and it tells you the species about 95% of the time (in North America). The other 5% it can often identify the family. Someone called it Shazam for nature. The app is patient; you can keep asking it to ID the same thing you asked about before and it will will answer again with no judgement. Seek is free; it was developed by folks who did iNaturalist, an app that uses crowdsourcing to identify species, but Seek uses machine learning to render the ID instantly. I’ve been impressed by how well this magic works. Kids and teachers love it. It gives them a superpower to name everything around them. — KK


Recomendo is an authentic, hand-crafted, human-written weekly newsletter that is free, but not cheap. Consider supporting our work with a paid option, now at the low price of $45 per year. Paid subs enable us to keep making it free for others. Recomendo is published by Cool Tools Lab, a small company of three people. We also run the Cool Tools website, a YouTube channel and podcast, and other newsletters, including Gar’s Tips & Tools, Nomadico, What’s in my NOW?, Tools for Possibilities, Books That Belong On Paper and Book Freak.

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Digital hygiene/The End of Children/How to Navigate the Weirdness

2025-04-06 17:00:41

Digital safety essentials

Andrej Karpathy's guide to digital hygiene has practical steps for protecting your privacy and security. Here are the essentials: Use a password manager (like 1Password) to create unique strong passwords for every service; get a hardware security key (like YubiKey) as your second factor authentication instead of text messages; and use Privacy.com to create credit card numbers that are locked to one specific merchant and can’t be used elsewhere, preventing unauthorized charges. — MF

Intro to global depopulation

Many people are having trouble wrapping their heads around the fact that global depopulation and not overpopulation is our challenge. The childless trend has been underway for 50 years but has accelerated dramatically recently. We are at the cusp of deaths outnumbering births on the planet, with no change in sight. I recommend this very, very long New Yorker article – “The End of Children” – as the very best introduction and explainer. It focuses on particular programs, people, and events in South Korea, which is leading the world in depopulation, much faster than the Japanese. The piece is beautifully written, expertly reported, and informed. I think everyone should read it; paste the article url link into 12FT to read it in full. — KK

How to Navigate the Weirdness

This two-part talk, How to Navigate the Weirdness by Erik Davis, gave me such great comfort and clarity on how to ground myself in the complexities of our current societal consciousness. The intention behind these talks is to honestly assess the present moment and share navigational tools for sanity, sense-making, and creative engagement. Davis gives historical context and talks about the transformative cultural shifts that have led us to this point, while also addressing the psychological impacts of media saturation, among other things. His strategies emphasize flexibility, mindfulness, and critical thinking. Here is part one and part two, and here is some of his advice (paraphrased):

  • Ground yourself in physical sensations and direct experiences to counterbalance the effects of media saturation and overwhelming information.

  • Use foxhole or gallows humor as a tool for resilience—find connection and levity even in difficult situations.

  • Embrace an "emotional remix," allowing opposite emotions like grief and joy to coexist, fostering a flexible emotional state.

  • Practice situational pluralism by recognizing that multiple valid frameworks exist for interpreting reality.

  • Deepen your capacity to embrace uncertainty, mystery, and doubt without searching for fact or reason—not everything fits into a fixed narrative.

—CD

Assisted backpacking

I love multi-day walks, but not hefting a loaded backpack the whole way. The solution is to have my luggage bag forwarded each day, so I only walk with a tiny daypack. This liberation is heavenly, and makes me glad to walk a week or more. Luckily there are outfitters that will arrange luggage forwarding in great places to walk in the countrysides of Europe and Asia. There are no guides; you pick the route you want, and the dates you want. They arrange modest lodging, the luggage forwarding, and then give you a map on your phone. The fees are very reasonable, not much more than the lodging itself. For example, last week I used MacsAdventures to help me walk the last 100km of the El Camino de Santiago in Spain. I’ve used the same outfitter to walk several self-guided week-long rambles in the Cotswolds, England. The arrangements and luggage pickups were flawless. — KK

Favorite Products

In Kevin Rose’s recent newsletter, he shares the results of his semi-annual survey of Favorite Things. With more than 27,000 votes across 24 categories, the results paint a clear picture of the top tools people are favoring right now. Kevin runs this survey to track the rapidly evolving AI landscape and keep his community informed on emerging trends and products. Like the results reflect, I still use most Apple and Google products for things like email, calendar, and browser, but I’ve permanently moved on from Google Search to a paid Perplexity plan, and I can’t imagine ever going back. — CD

USB-C to USB-A Adapter

These tiny Syntech USB-C to USB-A adapters let me connect my older USB devices to my newer laptops. The pack comes with two adapters that plug into the computer's USB port. — MF


Recomendo is an authentic, hand-crafted, human-written weekly newsletter that is free, but not cheap. Please consider supporting our work with a paid option, now at the low price of $45 per year. Paid subs enable us to keep making it free for others.

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Recomendo is published by Cool Tools Lab, a small company of three people. We also run the Cool Tools website, a YouTube channel and podcast, and other newsletters, including Gar’s Tips & Tools, Nomadico, What’s in my NOW?, Tools for Possibilities, Books That Belong On Paper and Book Freak.

Allo Mechanisms/tv.garden/Best condiment

2025-03-30 17:01:29

Alternative funding designs

Kickstarter uses a clever financing model where every backer’s money is returned if the full funding goal is not met. But this innovation is only one of many dozens of possible funding models, and dozen more ways of collaborating, or governing projects. Allo Mechanisms is a handy gallery of 60 different possible “capital allotment” mechanisms, already invented, that might work for your particular needs. Some of them already have implementations. — KK

Live TV streams from around the world

Tv.garden lets you spin a globe and watch live TV streams from around the world — no subscription needed. While channel surfing, I got caught up in watching Christian music videos in Senegal, Algerian news, and TV psychic readings in Bulgaria. It’s utterly captivating and transportive. — CD

Best condiment

I finally tried Fly By Jing's Sichuan Chili Crisp and now I understand the hype. This umami-rich oil is packed with crunchy bits of crushed chili pepper, garlic, shallots and preserved black beans that add intense flavor and mild heat to everything from eggs to ice cream. The tingly numbing Sichuan peppercorn is what makes it addictive. While some may balk at the price for 6 ounces, a little goes a long way. — MF

Best coffee ice cream

Now that there are over 600 Trader Joe’s stores in the US, I feel okay to recommend a favorite item from there. I think their Coffee Bean Blast Ice Cream is the best grocery store ice cream you can buy, or at the very least, as Trader Joe’s claims, “it’s the very best coffee ice cream available anywhere on planet Earth.” I’m going to fight for that. — KK

Discover your attachment style

This NPR LIFE KIT interview features Dr. Amir Levine, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist, discussing attachment theory in relationships and includes a short quiz adapted from his book to help listeners discover their own attachment style. Dr. Levine emphasizes that attachment is a biological need and that the four attachment styles — secure, anxious, avoidant, and anxious-avoidant — are normal variations in human behavior rather than pathologies. I had heard of attachment theory before and even worked on my own attachment issues before getting married, but what I learned from this interview that I didn't fully understand before is that addressing attachment issues is a two-person process, not just an individual responsibility, and that becoming more secure often involves surrounding oneself with secure individuals. I took the quiz, and it reported that in relationships, I'm 100% secure, 25% avoidant, and 13% anxious. — CD

Guide to understanding why things work (or don't)

This collection of Hacker Laws is aimed at software developers, but it provides insights for anyone trying to build or change things. Here are three:

Gall's Law says grand reinventions usually fail — working complex systems can only evolve from working simple systems, never from scratch.

Chesterton's Fence warns against eliminating an old policy or process that seems pointless, before first learning why it exists.

The Principle of Least Astonishment says that systems and processes should match users' expectations and mental models — the path of least surprise is usually the path to success. — MF


Recomendo is an authentic, hand-crafted, human-written weekly newsletter that is free, but not cheap. Please consider supporting our work with a paid option, now at the low price of $45 per year. Paid subs enable us to keep making it free for others.

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Recomendo is published by Cool Tools Lab, a small company of three people. We also run the Cool Tools website, a YouTube channel and podcast, and other newsletters, including Gar’s Tips & Tools, Nomadico, What’s in my NOW?, Tools for Possibilities, Books That Belong On Paper and Book Freak.

The Alpinist/OpenTimes map/Ultimate Book List

2025-03-23 17:02:55

Nail-biting documentary

If you found the documentary Free Solo – about climbing sheer mountain cliffs without ropes – nerve-wracking, then you’ll find The Alpinist documentary even more so. The crazy protagonist of Free Solo says the Alpinist is even crazier – he ascends sheer mountains in winter snow and ice – without ropes and by himself. This film tries hard to explain the why – why would anyone do this for fun? Watch till the end (on Amazon Prime). The documentary explains as well as it can be explained. — KK

Travel time U.S. map

Just click anywhere on the OpenTimes map of the United States and it displays color-coded zones showing how long it would take to drive, bike, or walk to surrounding areas — up to 6 hours away. (The driving times can be optimistic since they don't factor in traffic.) — MF

Ultimate Book List

The Ultimate Book List is a directory of books recommended by famous personalities, celebrities, and experts. I like that it includes source links to interviews and articles where these books were mentioned. If you’re just browsing, you can filter all the listed books by "most recommended." — CD

AI photoshopping

As a photographer and artist, I’ve longed for this tool, which you can try out for free now. It’s pretty cool. Using Google’s experimental Gemini 2.0 Flash you can upload an image (photograph, painting, cartoon, etc.) and have the AI make very specific changes in the image while keeping the rest of the image intact. Usually you get very convincing edits that match the original image. Sort of like the world’s best photoshopping for free instantly. (You need to register with Google’s AI Studio > Image Generation to get this beta version. Choose Gemini 2.0 Flash (Image Generation) Experimental from the Model dropdown menu in the right column, and then use the + to upload an image, and then type your request.). — KK

Discover your cosmic worldview

This Substack post presents a two-step "cosmic worldview" quiz designed to help you identify your core beliefs about the nature of reality and your place in the cosmos. First, you answer a series of questions to identify your beliefs about the nature of reality at a high level. Once you've identified with a broad cosmological category, you refine your beliefs by answering one final question to pinpoint your precise view of the cosmos. I took it a few times, because I don’t have a precise view, I’m somewhere between animism, Gnosticism, and the multiverse theory. This quiz is useful for self-discovery and for understanding diverse perspectives on existence. — CD

Best Wooden Spoon Set

I'm starting to replace my plastic cooking utensils with wood and metal. I started by getting an OXO Good Grips set of 3 beech wood spoons (small, medium, and large). I like the solid (rather than laminated) design with a chunky handle. Just don't put them in the dishwasher — that's a quick way to ruin any wooden utensil. — MF


Recomendo is an authentic, hand-crafted, human-written weekly newsletter that is free, but not cheap. Please consider supporting our work with a paid option, now at the low price of $45 per year. Paid subs enable us to keep making it free for others.

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Recomendo Unclassified Ads work! Here’s how to reach over 102,000 subscribers for just $150.


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Recomendo is published by Cool Tools Lab, a small company of three people. We also run the Cool Tools website, a YouTube channel and podcast, and other newsletters, including Gar’s Tips & Tools, Nomadico, What’s in my NOW?, Tools for Possibilities, Books That Belong On Paper and Book Freak.

Many-Worlds Vision/Life in Weeks/Overview effect

2025-03-16 17:02:18

Dreams illustrated

Other people’s dreams are usually not interesting, but Claudia Dawson—our "CD" in this newsletter—records and visualizes her dreams daily in a way I find enjoyable to read. She summarizes her dream in a few brief sentences, and illustrates them with an AI-generated image. She made a book of her most potent and profound dreams of the last few years, and I’ve been sending friends a copy because it is an unusual and distinctive art. The collection is called Many-Worlds Vision, and she also sends out a newsletter by the same name. – KK

Life in Weeks

This free website app lets you design a map to visualize your life in weeks. It’s pretty self-explanatory and easy to use, you just need to create a free account to save it. I’m still working on mine, adding moves, jobs, and relationships, but as I build it and preview it, I feel a mix of emotions that is both sobering and inspirational for the second half of my life. — CD

Cosmic perspective changer

Astronauts seeing Earth from space experience a mix of awe and interconnectedness that reduces anxiety and increases well-being. Astronaut Edgar Mitchell called it an "explosion of awareness." This Forbes article explains how to get this "overview effect" without leaving Earth. The key is seeking experiences that make you feel small against something vast: stand on high viewpoints, stargaze away from city lights, step back to find meaning, and find a way to "trust the process." — MF

Genre-bending movie

I recommend you watch the Oscar-winning film Emilia Perez without knowing too much about it. Don’t read up. The less you know ahead of time, the better. I can say that it’s in Spanish with subtitles, a crime melodrama with feel-good vibes, plus it is a French musical (!), and you won’t guess what happens next. Not in a weird, spooky, absurd way, but in a plausibly surprising way. It is now streaming on Netflix. — KK

Best coffee bean storage container

I use an OXO POP Container (1.7 Qt) to store coffee beans. It has a push-button mechanism to create an airtight seal. It's dishwasher safe, including the lid. Just don't drop it — the BPA-free plastic can crack. — MF

Developmental Affirmations

These affirmations support growth at every stage of life, starting with the prenatal, and are designed to be used across your entire lifespan. Many of these messages were not expressed to me as a child, but I am using them now as a way to "reparent" myself. You can speak them to yourself, write them down and carry them with you, or express them through the way you speak, touch, and interact with the people you love, especially when they need support. The one I’m working on right now is: “You can say your hellos and goodbyes to people, roles, dreams, and decisions.” — CD


Recomendo is an authentic, hand-crafted, human-written weekly newsletter that is free, but not cheap. Please consider supporting our work with a paid option, now at the low price of $45 per year. Paid subs enable us to keep making it free for others.

Upgrade


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Recomendo is published by Cool Tools Lab, a small company of three people. We also run the Cool Tools website, a YouTube channel and podcast, and other newsletters, including Gar’s Tips & Tools, Nomadico, What’s in my NOW?, Tools for Possibilities, Books That Belong On Paper and Book Freak.

Netflix codes/Travel Adapter/Real China

2025-03-09 15:01:49

Visiting the real China

China is vast, nearly a continent to itself with highly diverse ethnic cultures. It has become an easy place to travel, with 28,000 miles (45,000 km) of high speed trains, and cheap domestic flights. My guide to traveling to the most interesting places in China is an English-speaking YouTuber, Yan, who calls herself Little Chinese Everywhere. Yan records her explorations of her own country, usually to offbeat, little-visited places, far from crowds, but extremely enjoyable. She specializes in the border areas of China where it mixes minority cultures (Tibetan, Mongolian, Uyghur, Vietnamese, etc.). Her channel is perfect armchair travel because she captures a very unromantic view of China, taking buses, renting motor scooter, staying at expensive hostels, interviewing shop keepers. This is the real China, and if you wanted to get a sense of what the everyday country is like, watch her channel. Better yet, visit it. — KK

Psychedelic readiness preparedness

If you’re considering psychedelic therapy, I recommend starting with Althea’s Psychedelic Preparedness Scale, a three-minute quiz that helps assess your readiness by evaluating mental health stability, intentions, knowledge, support systems, and coping skills. Developed in a clinical trial at University College London, the quiz identifies areas needing improvement to ensure a safer and more meaningful experience. Althea, a Public Benefit Corporation based in Oregon and Colorado, connects individuals with licensed facilitators for legal psychedelic therapy, aiming to make these transformative experiences more accessible and stigma-free. — CD

European word explorer

This web tool instantly shows how a word translates across about 30 European languages, displayed on a color-coded map. Type in English words like "cat" or "thank you" and the translations appear in their geographic locations. The color codes show linguistic families like Romance and Slavic languages. Proszę bardzo! — MF

Netflix codes

I’m often very unimpressed with my Netflix algorithm, but these Netflix Codes have helped me discover new and surprising content. It’s useful, if you can overlook all the unsightly ads. — CD

Nuclear bomb rockets

One of the crazier projects funded by the US government was a plan in 1957 to build a 4,000-ton spaceship powered by exploding nuclear bombs. A small group of scientists aimed to reach Mars by 1965 in Project Orion, long before the dream of NASA’s Apollo. One of those working on the project was physicist Freeman Dyson. His son George Dyson interviewed his father and all remaining participants, and got thousands of declassified documents to tell the whole astounding story in a remarkable book, Project Orion. Published to little fanfare in 2002, Dyson has re-released a self-published expanded version (2025) with new material, new documents and illustrations, full citations of his sources, all material that the original publisher excluded. This strange story has lessons for attempting (and funding) hairy, audacious seemingly impossible projects. It’s great historical storytelling, too. – KK

Universal travel adapter with USB charging

The compact EPICKA Universal Travel Adapter has 5 USB ports (3 USB-C, 2 USB-A) and plug configurations for US/EU/UK/AUS. Its LED power indicator lets you know it's working. Just remember it's not a voltage converter — your devices need to be dual-voltage compatible. — MF


Recomendo is an authentic, hand-crafted, human-written weekly newsletter that is free, but not cheap. Please consider supporting our work with a paid option, now at the low price of $45 per year. Paid subs enable us to keep making it free for others.

Upgrade


Recomendo Unclassified Ads work! Here’s how to reach over 101,000 subscribers for just $150.


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Recomendo is published by Cool Tools Lab, a small company of three people. We also run the Cool Tools website, a YouTube channel and podcast, and other newsletters, including Gar’s Tips & Tools, Nomadico, What’s in my NOW?, Tools for Possibilities, Books That Belong On Paper and Book Freak.